today i was watching the news and i caught a news clip about the new USA FOR HAITI. they gave a brief broadcast of the song, i guess the whole thing will be revealed at the Vancouver Olympics but i reckon Shenzhen ought to have a copy before that.

hearing the tune made me sentimental. and i watched the new singers and i wondered, 'how on earth do they think that miley cyrus, l'il wayne and the like can do this song justice"? i quickly went to youtube to hear the original…to listen to michael jackson's haunting little voice inform us, "we are the world, we are the children…" to al jarreau, stevie wonder, bette midler, diana ross. a great song, great unlikely harmonies (Dionne and WIllie Nelson?)

i am a bit shortsighted and snobby to presume that the new crowd 'cant touch this'…this being the original. in fact, my own father had quite the disregard for 80's singers, and insisted they didn't have a thing on frankie, elvis, dino, the beatles and sighed in patient contempt if and when these big haired boys tried to take on a big band hit. (i think he always thought billy joel had an okay voice but possibly the respect was only there because at the time billy joel had Christie Brinkley and dad always though Christie Brinkley, after mum of course, was one of the cutest girls he knew.)

oh 1980's, you were wonderful.

it's amazing to see how many hits the USA for Africa video has gotten in the past four days on you tube. the 80's lovers want to reassure themselves that they weren't dreaming, that the overplayed original was pretty good. People born in the late seventies want to jog their memories of what their older siblings or parents were endlessly playing.

USA for africa. heck, i had the entire album. it was pretty good.

it was also a quarter of a century ago.

and now we're hearing it all over again. same words, different voices, probably a different target audience, but hopefully the reaction, and the giving, will be just as powerful and overwhelming as it was in 1985.